Spade Work in Hull (1933)

Party News from the August 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

Much-needed propaganda has been carried on with good effect in Hull during recent weeks, by Comrade Cash, who is staying there at the invitation of a local comrade. In about two weeks, at the end of June and beginning of July, ten meetings were held, with an average audience of about 60 or 70, and with small but steady sales of literature. In view of the difficulty of gathering an audience almost single-handed, and in view of many unfavourable local conditions, the interest aroused has been quite satisfactory. With continuous propaganda good progress could be made here. Hull members and sympathisers are urged to give their support.

Blogger's Note:

This report of Sammy Cash doing a speaking tour in Hull was originally attached to this Provincial Propaganda Tour report on the blog, but I only just realised that they were actually two separate reports, recording two separate propaganda activities.

S.P.G.B. Propaganda Meetings (1933)

Party News from the August 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

Editorial: Nothing from Pilkington (1962)

Editorial from the August 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

As readers of the Socialist Standard will know, in all the forty or so years since the beginning of broadcasting in this country, the SPGB has never been allowed by the BBC to state its case on the air. Our many applications have always been rejected. The BBC (like the independent television companies) is under no obligation to give opportunities to us or other small organisations, and as far as we are concerned they have always found lack of “programme interest” or some such reason for not doing so.

It contrasts oddly with the kind of argument advocates of nationalisation were fond of using to the effect that “public ownership” is a protection against the abuse of power by private monopolies. It also contrasts with experience in the USA and Canada where our comrades, and our own members on visits to these countries, have many times put the Socialist case on radio and TV.

When the Pilkington Committee was set up we put in evidence detailing our experience. It appears to have had no effect. In this Report (Paragraphs 294-307) they deal with Party Political Broadcasting, meaning the broadcasts agreed between the “leading political parties” for their own advantage, and do indeed have a few words to say about the question “should minor parties be given the opportunity to broadcast” but this gets nowhere because they decided that it was “impossible to write down an exact definition of a ‘political party’ for the purposes of affording the right to make party political broadcasts.”

They add “it must remain a matter to be settled empirically”—which no doubt will continue to be various reasons for saying no.

So another Committee looks at the question and does nothing. Its predecessor, the Beveridge Committee 1949 did at least tentatively suggest (Paragraph 257) that “it might be reasonable to have something that may be held to correspond to a ‘Hyde Park’ of the air, that is to say, an opportunity for all minorities which have messages, religious or other, on some occasion to put their messages over, not regularly or at length, but some time.”

The fact that the SPGB submitted evidence is recorded in the Report (Appendix B, Page 324) and the evidence itself will be included in an Appendix not yet published.

Editorial: ITV Squeals (1962)

Editorial from the August 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

When big, fat Billy Bunter saw his sausage stolen at breakfast time, he set up an almighty squeal.

And that was what we heard from the independent television companies, and from some of the newspapers which have interests in ITV when the Pilkington report came out.

With one difference. The fat schoolboy never tried to convince everybody else that it was in their interests that he should have the sausage, as well as any bacon that was going.

One of the loudest squeals, as we might have guessed, came from the Daily Mirror: “They tell the public, in 160,000 words, to go to hell.” The Mirror has a big holding in Associated Television.

It is not difficult to find the reasons for these squeals. The Pilkington recommendations, if they are ever fully applied, could mean a lot less profit for some of the independent TV companies, which have been doing so well for themselves.

That was why their shares slumped, the day after the report came out.

Pilkington had some fascinating things to say on the scope, philosophy and responsibilities of broadcasting and, reasonably enough, questioned whether the sheep-like acceptance of the drivel which goes under the name of entertainment on television is really enjoyment.

This part of the report was savaged in the press, by papers which themselves are not slow to pontificate on the responsibilities of giving out public information.

But what really caused a flutter was the Pilkington conclusion that ITV had failed to provide good television because it was too bothered about selling advertising time. With something like a scandalised air, the committee uncovered the fact that the profit motive can be responsible for the deliberate production of something which is mean and shoddy.

Now this is interesting. But it is some thing which Socialists would have thought obvious to everybody.

News in Review: Algerian Independence (1962)

The News in Review column from the August 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Algerian Independence

Before the last shots of the independence celebrations had died away, the new state of Algeria was engaged in a frontier dispute with neighbouring Morocco and the troops were being moved to and fro.

There was irony, too, in the political split between deputy prime minister Ben Bella and his nominal chief Benkhedda. One of the supremely aggravating factors in the French suppression of Algeria was the power of the occupying army, and the use which was made of it by the political and economic interests which stood for French Algeria.

Of all people, Ben Bella should have learnt a lesson from this. Yet in his power struggle he has recruited the Algerian Nationalist Army to his side and at one stage seemed about to use it in an attempted coup.

No hint was given by the Algerian nationalist leaders during the fighting that this might be the outcome of the bloodshed.

They promised much fairer times. Events have shown that Algeria will do its best to become a no nonsense capitalist state.

Now that the FLN has won, what can we look forward to?

Already, the new state is feeling its way in the international rivalries of capitalism. Mr. Ben Bella’s policy of free alignment with any country which will play along with Algeria’s economic development promises to provide one of the political divisions of the future.

It is matter of time before the Algerian workers are told that it is up to them to work harder and to make sacrifices in the interests of the people who will really own the country.

The spurious idealism and the promises of the days of the revolution will be forgotten as the new Algeria struggles to take its place among the other capitalist nations.

And sooner or later there will be another Algeria to fill the headlines with horror. At the moment the slate is almost clean, but capitalism will throw up other colonial wars. Or worse.

Beeching’s Cuts

The axe man cometh.

This year’s report from the British Transport Commission indicated where the proposed cuts in rail services are likely to fall.

The Newport to Brecon line, for instance, in South Wales. Here, said Transport Minister Marples, a statistical half-man is being carried for one hundred and seven miles by a 160 ton train—about equal to a five-ton crane lifting a bottle of beer.

“It would pay us,” he said, “to give that man a car and close the line.”

That is the yardstick which the Beeching inquiry has had to use. Not: Is it useful? but: Does it pay? Some of the Commission’s undertakings can answer yes to this question. London Transport pays. British Road Services and the docks have increased their receipts.

Only the railways—and only some parts of them at that—fail utterly to conform to capitalism’s law of existence: Does it pay?

Mr. Marples is not alone in his recognition of this law. Labour Party spokesman George Strauss said, when the House of Commons were debating the Transport Commission’s report, that the railway losses gave people the impression that what he called “publicly owned” transport was a failure.

Mr. Strauss has his definition of a failure, and of a success. The report showed, he said, that the reverse was true because all the services except the railways and the inland waterways had made a profit.

Both Tories and Labour are united in the opinion that to succeed nationalised industry must make a profit. Which means they agree that basically nationalised industries are as much a part of capitalism’s economy as any private industry is.

One fact seems to have escaped notice. Removing the rail services from many parts of the country means that those areas are being left to depend upon road transport. This means that the government are virtually creating transport monopolies all over the country.

This is hardly consistent with the Conservative doctrine of what they like to call “healthy” competition. But really capitalism is impatient of all doctrines except one.

Does it pay?

Cold Comfort

Too late for the July Socialist Standard came two noteworthy items of news. Minor in themselves, perhaps, they neatly show that the seriousness with which a person regards the housing question depends upon which end of the telescope he is rich enough to be able to view it through.

ITEM ONE: The London County Council reported that the number of homeless families in their care continues to increase and to set up new records as it does so. There are 803 such families now, involving over 3,800 people. This is the highest ever.

ITEM TWO : The Lord Mayor of Nottingham said that, on a recent visit to the Midlands Design Centre, Lord Snowdon had told him that the publicity given to the high cost of restoring Princess Margaret’s new home had not gone unnoticed. He would just as soon live in a small cottage.

To use that classical phrase: No comment.

Your wages are a problem (1962)

From the August 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Do wage increase put up prices?

One of capitalism’s toughest problems is the size of the wage which is paid to the working people who keep the system operating.

Basically, it is a problem of almost mathematical simplicity. The working class produce values which are higher than their wages. They produce a surplus value which goes to their employers. If the workers can force their wages up, there is less of the surplus left for their employers. On the other hand, if the employers can force wages down, more of the surplus will go to them. This must hold good, however the productivity of the worker may be altered by changes in natural conditions or in the intensity of his labour.

It is inevitable that capitalism’s governments should concern themselves in this dispute which, by the way, is known as a “class struggle” by Socialists, who have an uncomfortable habit of calling a capitalist spade a spade. Governments do their governing in the interests of the employing, owning class of capitalism. It is, therefore, equally inevitable that when they concern themselves with the class struggle over wages, governments should take the side of the capitalist class.

Thirty or forty years ago there was no great need for the government’s intervention to be especially vigorous. With capitalism in the doldrums, with never less than one million unemployed in this country, the working class were badly placed to push home any demand for better wages. If they did push any such demands the government had only to stand aside and watch the workers starve themselves onto their knees in a strike or a lock-out.

Since the war, conditions have been rather different. Wage rises must now be restrained by government action and appeals, rather than by the old method of both sides beating their heads together. Sometimes, indeed, conditions have defeated even the appeals and the government itself has surrendered, offering wage increases rather than face a strike. This has happened more than once over the railwaymen, much to the annoyance of newspapers like The Economist, which irritably demands at such times to know whether the government is serious in its desire to stop wages going up.

An essential part of the official campaign on wages has been the thinking up of responsible-sounding excuses for refusing the workers’ demands. These excuses must be epitomised in a snappy name for the refusals. This time last year it was the pay pause which, it seems clear, was designed to hold wages in check for a few months. There are signs that the pause was at least as successful as the government could have hoped. Apart from the rises which were denied to government employees, the engineers themselves forebore to press a wage claim last autumn. The engineering employers have now conceded a three per cent. rise, but in the opinion of at least one newspaper, this would have come earlier but for the pay pause.

Now the “guiding light” on wage increases has replaced the pause, although it is being somewhat buffeted by the arbitration tribunals.

It is safe to forecast that, for those who are willing to do a little research and remembering, the events of capitalism will expose the government’s excuses for what they are. Just after the war, for example, the Attlee government launched a great campaign on wages. There was a propaganda drive to convince everybody that rises were inadmissible because, among other things, Britain’s international balance of payments was in jeopardy. Ministers lost no chance of parading statistics which showed how the British capitalist class were spending more on their imports than they were receiving from their exports. We heard many homely analogies about the difficulties of families which spent more than their income and we were invited to regard ourselves as members of a big, British, capitalist family.

A lot has happened since then. The international trading situation of Britain has varied considerably over the years. Once before—during 1959—the British capitalist class actually had a favourable balance of payments. Now it has happened again. The Treasury has announced that the first quarter of this year yielded a payments surplus in Britain’s international trade of £21 millions. The terms of trade—the ratio of import to export prices—are set fair for British capitalism and have been so for some time. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has suggested that over the year the surplus in payments might come to something like £150 millions.

At the same time another of the difficulties which faced the Labour government has gone, to be replaced by its opposite. There is no longer a desperate need to rush into a gaping wide world market, a market waiting to be filled with any substandard commodities which could be produced fast enough to pump into it. Coal, for example, was one of the big needs of the post war years. But so much has the demand for coal decreased that the National Coal Board has closed many of its pits and intends to close still more.

The dilemma

NCB chairman Lord Robens, speaking at the last annual conference of the National Union of Mineworkers, put his finger on British capitalism’s present dilemma:

“This is not an era of coal at any price—that ended in 1957; we are in the era of hard selling based on price, quality and service, and in this situation the fundamental need is to be able to produce the right produce at the right price.”

Conditions, then, have decidedly changed since the 1945 Labour government and in doing so have wiped out the excuses which were used to justify the wage freeze and the other restrictions of Crippsian austerity. The government itself has changed. But government policy on wage increases remains unaltered. All that has happened is that the old excuses have been replaced by the new. The catch-phrases of the late forties have given way to those of the early sixties. A pay pause may sound different from a wage freeze, but in fact it means almost exactly the same.

In one respect the government has not been caught napping by the changes of the past seventeen years. They have not run out of excuses. Now, we are told that wage rises are inflationary. The argument which goes with this assertion has almost become part of the mystique of modern capitalism.

When wages rise, runs the argument, the costs of production go up and the employers automatically increase their prices to recoup this. Higher prices mean that any unit of currency is able to buy less than before, which means that more currency units are needed to circulate the same amount of commodities. Thus wages are supposed to be going up closely followed by prices which, as they rise, nullify the wage increases and cut the purchasing power of the pound. This, say the pundits, is inflation.

This argument ignores several basic facts of capitalist life. Wages are the price of the commodity labour power and generally will fluctuate in accordance with the state of the labour market. But a market for one commodity can be buoyant at the same time as for another it is depressed. Although the coal mines are having difficulty in selling their product it is still possible for miners to get rises because at the moment most of them could get another job without great difficulty. The prices of many of the commodities which will for ever be associated with the so-called Affluent Society—television sets, refrigerators, washing machines—have tumbled over the past few years. But, as we have seen, the wages of the electricians and the engineers who make these goods have increased.

Karl Marx made the point over a century ago and it is still valid today. Highly paid workers can produce cheap commodities, and vice versa. A wage rise need not, therefore, be followed by a price rise.

The Guardian recently challenged the starting point of the inflation theory. In an editorial published on June 25, they said: This is the same mode of thinking as the one that regards success in enforcing a pay pause as the overriding test of present British economic policy. But in fact labour costs in the United States have risen sharply in periods of falling production and have actually declined in periods of recovery in spite of bigger increases in wages. . . . There is much evidence that the same is true of Britain.

Where, now are the protestations of The Guardian—and of other papers—that wage increases must put up labour costs? Are they buried, along with the other stale excuses? If so, we may be sure that they will return, even if in reincarnation.

Yes, wages are a problem and like most problems they are fertile in paradoxes. Perhaps the biggest paradox of all is that the problem will not be solved by putting wages up, or down, but by getting rid of them altogether.

Ivan

Obituary: Nat Posner (1962)

Obituary from the August 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bloomsbury Branch have sadly learned of the death of Nat Posner, who had been ill for some time. A member for over twenty years, he had known and supported the Party a long time and had interested workers in Socialism for more than forty years. Some of these joined the Party thirty years ago becoming very active in propaganda work. Originally working as a group at their place of work they sold thousands of Socialist Standards and pamphlets and took regular weekly collections for the Party from sympathizers over a period of years. Thus, our comrade Posner by quietly and patiently convincing others, set off a chain of socialist activity. He was a frequent chairman at outdoor meetings especially at Hyde Park; a consistent and staunch member, he will be missed.

P. H.

Blogger's Note:

This obituary notice was already on the blog. It was part of a News from the Branches column that was originally posted on the blog back in 2014 but it was somehow lost in the mix. Comrade Posner's obituary deserves its own post. Nat Posner originally joined the Bloomsbury Branch of the SPGB in February 1940, and his Form A tells us that before he joined the SPGB, he was a member of the Communist Party, He wrote a handful of articles for the Socialist Standard in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and they are well worth checking out.

SPGB Meetings (1962)

Party News from the August 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Letters: Religion (1966)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Religion

Dear Sir,

I believe Socialists who attack religion are acting against the interests of the people and against the establishment of Socialism.

I am referring specifically to your article "Catholics In Confusion" in the April Socialist Standard. Of course there was much in that article which is true—where it describes the evil doings of some clergy— but evil doings are not religion they are just evil doings.

The point is that true religion is pro-Socialism and anti-capitalism. The Bible is very anti-usury which is the corner stone of capitalism.

Did not Jesus knock the rich money-lenders? He was in fact a Socialist as every decent religionist must be.

By all means knock bad religionists but praise the Socialist principles in true religion—such as brotherly love and compassion. There are many good Socialists who believe in God—for example the Rev. Hewlett Johnson, the Red Dean. Indeed I would go so far as to say that to be a sincere believer in God one has to be a Socialist.

To be an out-and-out materialist is getting a bit old-fashioned. Universities (even in Russia) are devoting part of their efforts to research into such things as telepathy and prediction and even survival of the human soul after bodily death. 1 have had cast iron proof of such things as telepathy, prediction, yes and even survival.

There is no irreconcilable conflict between Socialism and religion.

H. Horwood,

London, N.W.9.

Reply:

Mr. Horwood claims that his is the true religion but so do the clergy whose "evil doings’' he condemns.

Usury is not the cornerstone of capitalism; it is only one branch of capitalism's structure which derives its unearned income from the surplus value produced by the working class. The basis of the workers' exploitation is not usury; it is private ownership of the means of wealth production.

Even if we accept the Bible story of Jesus turning the money-lenders out of the temple it does not alter the fact that the basis of religion belief in the supernatural and a life after death is directly opposed to Socialism.

The religious person accepts the conditions in this life because he thinks that there is a better life coming. His philosophy explains society in terms of "good" and “evil"; the Socialist explains it in means of society's economic development.

Dr. Hewlett Johnson is a well-known supporter of capitalism in Russia, China and Eastern Europe. These countries are run by dictatorships which show little brotherly love and compassion to their political opponents.

Universities have been studying telepathy, life after death and so on for a very long time. Up to the present, despite all the investigations, there is no scientific proof whatever to support the claim that such things exist.

There is no reason to believe in the existence of a supernatural. This is the only life which we know of and Socialists work to make it the best possible, by establishing a humane world: In this, one of the barriers we meet is religion.

Editorial Committee.

Letters: Then and now (1966)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Then and now

Recently I was presented with a bound volume of the Socialist Standard for 1911/1917. Reading of the events of those far-off days gives one a weird feeling of having been here before.

Of particular interest is the leading article of July 1911, which stated the attitude of the SPGB to the strike of the British Seamen's Union. The tangible and known enemies of the seamen were clearly the Shipmasters (the owners), the Liberal government and all their agencies. But their intangible, unknown enemies were their own leaders, officials. Labour M.P.s who were knifing them from behind.

Now the 1966 strike of the National Union of Seamen was certainly not premature—the last one, 55 years ago, seemed to have dispirited them thoroughly and laid them under a spell which lasted right through two major wars, through two “Brave New Worlds" and through all the intervening years of "good" and bad times.

From Australia it appears the seamen again had the usual open enemies to face as well as the Labour government and the TUC. Yet it must be conceded that this is the very set-up the seamen in particular, and the working class in general, so vigorously support.

Peter Furey, 

Melbourne, Australia.

'I never thought it would be you.'

A first for the blog . . . and it was a long time coming.

With the completion of the October 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard, that means that every complete October issue of the Socialist Standard (1904 thru' 2026) is now on the blog. The first month to be completed in its entirety. 

One caveat, though. When the blog originally appeared in 2006 it was not fully formed, and bore little or no resemblance to the blog it is today. It has continually been a work in progress over the years, and the way I have approached digitising the Socialist Standards has changed over that time accordingly. 

That means that in the early years of the blog I did not make a point of including screen grabs of Party meetings listed in the Standards. I didn't originally see the point of posting such information, thought it wouldn't be of interest, but I've revised my opinion on that matter in recent years because I've come to realise that the Party's activity at indoor and outdoor meetings was so central to its identity. A reader of the blog cannot get a full sense of the history and vibrancy of the Party in its past if the reader is unaware of how much activity was going on, how many meetings were being held, both indoors and outdoors, and where.

So, unfortunately, some of the earliest completed Standards on the blog don't include the Socialist Party meetings info. I may revisit those old Standards to correct that mistake but it's not a priority right now.

'I never thought it would be you.'

What's with that post title? Well, apart from it also being the title of an excellent short story by the Scottish writer, Gordon Legge, it refers to the fact that October shouldn't have been the first month to be completed on the blog. It should have been July or August . . . definitely August. I don't know what happened . . . 

. . . but I know what's happening next.

This Month's Quotation: Karl Marx (1937)

The Front Page quote from the October 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Even the ruling classes are beginning to realise that contemporary society is not a solid crystal, but an organism capable of changing, and continually undergoing change."

K. Marx

This Month’s Quotation

The quotation in the panel on the front page is taken from Karl Marx’s preface to the first German edition of  "Capital.” The preface was written on July 25th, 1867.

Mr. F. Montague, M.P., Attacks the Labour Theory of Value (Second Article) (1937)

From the October 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note: 

Fred Montague was the Labour MP for Islington West and, as a young man, was an active member of Hyndman's Social Democratic Federation. He was replying to Frank Evans' two-part article on the Labour Theory of Value which appeared in the July and August 1937 issues of the Socialist Standard.

Link to the first article.

Mr. F. Montague, M.P., Attacks the Labour Theory of Value (Second Article)

It is a matter of common observation that the producer using out-of-date methods stands no chance in competition, and Marx, quite correctly adopts the “socially necessary” formula. But what is not generally seen is that no such formula is logically required in order to establish the labour time concept if it can be established. It is socially necessary labour alone that is held to count, and properly so, but the process of striking an average to arrive at the “standard” around which prices fluctuate works just as well whether socially necessary labour time or individual labour time is assumed. All that is proved by that process is that commodities are commodities and that there are just as many after a series of exchanges as before. Marxists live in a dialectical world of their own. They cannot see that there is no standard but what prices themselves put there, or that prices do not explain themselves. “Socially necessary” has no more to do with one doctrine more than another unless one rather than another is provisionally accepted. There is no objection to a provisional hypothesis in science. The objection is to using it as proof of its own case.

The same manner of limping logic occurs in respect to Utility. Mr. Evans starts off by saying that because some material objects possessing utility (air and sunshine) have no exchange value, therefore utility in other objects also can have nothing to do with exchange value, although these are exchangeable. Yet if I argued that as the product of the hand-loom weaver in an age of the power-loom has no economic relation to value, therefore labour in a modem factory or shed produces no value, Mr. Evans would properly laugh me out of court. Let Mr. Evans try his statement out syllogistically.

Utility theories (for which I hold no brief) no more attempt to explain value in terms of individual usefulness than the Marxian theory attempts to explain value in terms of individual labour. The cup-of-cold-water-to-the-parched-traveller-in-the-desert has no more to do with the case than the hand-loom weaver. If Marx may average, cancel-out, and socialise to further orders, so may the utilitarian. Use-value, after all, is part of the Marxian definition of the commodity and is common to all commodities, and when Mr. Evans says that the usefulness of a commodity “differs with individuals and differs with the same person" the believer in utility as a basis of value has a perfect right to reply, and in fact does so though Marxists do not seem to know it, to the effect that it is average social usefulness that is expressed in demand and that defines its effective are much as the gold limit is defined, or as the length of a pendulum controls its oscillation.

I think that utility is as barren as labour time for the purpose of value and for the same reason, i.e., that it is impossible to find an explanation of the factors of exchange between commodities in any theory dependent upon integrating prices. But it is a striking commentary on Marxian cocksure obtuseness to find that while Marxists are extremely scornful of the simple-minded critic who cannot understand the difference between plain and “undifferentiated" labour yet they swallow the absurd notion that utility can mean nothing more than day-by-day variations of personal tastes.

If, then, we reject the dogmatic assumption (it is nothing more) that labour, measured by time is the basis of value, do we give away the Socialist case? Value expressed in price is a capitalist phenomenon belonging to the money-wages system. In what manner is it necessary to establish its basis in time labour in order to justify the abolition of both money and wages?

The Marxist theory assumes that, qualitative differences in labour are nothing other than a question of what Mr. Evans calls “the time and cost of producing skill" as if the labour of an eminent bacteriologist or of one who succeeds in irrigating a continent were a thing of “clocking-in" and “knocking-off," that such men could be turned out of a sausage machine, and that their remuneration beyond the common undifferentiated denominator is taken out of the worker as a part of surplus value. It does not work out like that even in capitalist economy with all the price averaging and cost averaging in the world. But what if it did ?

Labour time value, even if it were true as a fact of capitalist exchange, can have no application, I contend, to Socialist ideas and principles. Wealth is not a thing of ‘‘hours, days and weeks" of time, but an evolutionary, social, and historical product. Labour time, as such, produces no more than it did in the Stone Age. Marx admits this when he speaks of “existing conditions of production." Existing conditions of production do not occur in a vacuum; they are “congealed" history, to use the approved metaphysical jargon. Yet I am told that exploitation is incapable of proof unless it can be shown that it is exploitation of time labour “in the factory." Could any conclusion be more puerile and beggarly?

Everyone is equally entitled (or contrariwise, no one) to the social heritage of economic evolution. Before the consideration of working begins! All start with a credit that makes the time and factory figment mean and ridiculous: butcher, baker, journeyman, thief, and the village idiot! “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" is the antithesis of the Marxian “hours, days and weeks." And the member of the working-class who has never done a stroke of work in his life and for whom capitalism has not been able to find a use is, nevertheless, robbed.

Exploitation is a bigger thing than one of measured labour, and would be even if the time theory could be shown to hold water. Exploitation is the cumulative robbery of the workers in time measured by history and not by the clock. If Socialism is to be defended by proof of exploitation in factory time, then Socialism is reduced to negation and contradiction. It becomes nothing more at best than the case for equality of remuneration. If it is to stand, then, not only capitalist exploitation but “reward" (wages!) under Socialism must logically be “measured by time." And not even State capitalism in Russia can make that work!

Within necessarily limited space I have endeavoured to show (1) that the Marxian labour time doctrine is not a theory of value in the sense, say, that the quantity theory of money is a theory of money, since the subject of the “theory" is not even defined until the theory itself is established; (2) that this difficulty leads to question-begging presumptions in which a form of value by definition is utilised in advance to demonstrate its own nature; (3) that the figurative standard of value is only the mean of the very prices that are said to fluctuate round it and has no other existence outside an imaginary postulate required to beg the question; (4) that the famous “dear" and “cheap" tour de force is a logical absurdity; and (5) that exploitation of labour is not merely a contingent phenomenon of either factory or market. There is no answer to this case in demanding to know what my alternative theory of value is. The subject is Marx. My ideas on value would take as much space again for what they might be worth and, in any event, I am not so terribly concerned. If one is not aware of the rottenness of capitalism and the iniquity of the wage system from practical experience one is not likely to extract the blinding truth out of algebraic transcendentalism.

Reply:

In our previous contribution, in last month's issue, we dealt with the erroneous suggestion that Marx strikes an average of prices to arrive at a standard. In his opening paragraph Mr. Montague writes that, for the purpose of a standard, individual labour would serve as well as socially necessary. Without going deeply into the question, it can be said at once that if we were only concerned with averages it would not matter, but as we are concerned with understanding and explaining prices it does matter very much.

The whole of society’s paid labour is expended on goods and services. Services are charges upon production, and are met out of surplus value. The labour spent in connection with production (which would include transportation) is the only labour that produces value and is the basis of price.

Production is divided between production of gold and production of ordinary commodities. In the exchange of commodities value is expressed in prices related to gold. Thus the relation between the labour required to produce gold and the labour required to produce other articles is expressed as a certain amount of £ s. d. If an unnecessary fraction of the total social labour has been spent on a given article its price will be lower than that of another article containing the same quantity of labour. The socially-necessary idea explains this apparent discrepancy.

Opponents of the labour theory of value have urged, and still do so, that if the value of an article depends upon the amount of labour incorporated in it then the article produced by out-of-date methods is more valuable than that produced by up-to-date methods. The insistence upon socially-necessary as the labour that produces value is the answer to this argument.

Mr. Montague’s second paragraph is.puzzling. It presumably refers to the third paragraph of the article he is criticising (July issue of “ S.S.”), which was as follows: —

Let us take a few commodities. Take apples and amethysts, bread and barometers, cradles and coffins. What have they got in common which make# them all “commodities” ? They are all physical things and have a use, but so also with daisies and dewdrops. What distinguishes the things in the first group is not that they are useful, since this is common to both groups, but that they are the proceeds of human labour and are the subject of commercial transactions. At a stroke the commodity is transformed from a physical into a social phenomenon! For things produced for market bear a banner with this strange device : “I am worth —.” They have value. The things in the second group do not go to market: they have usefulness, but not value. Things produced for exchange have usefulness and value. They represent values, not usefulness, to the intending seller; they represent usefulness only to the prospective buyer, or to the last of a chain of buyers, the one who buys to enjoy the use of them.

The essence of this is: Some useful things never go to market—they have no value. Other useful things do go to market—it is only these that have value. Where do Mr. Montague’s remarks bear on this argument? Where does the logic limp?

To Mr. Montague the labour theory of value is nothing more than averaging prices and making assertions, therefore he can see no difference between it and the averaging of the utilitarians. The fundamental error is Mr. Montague’s and not Marx’s.

Perhaps Mr. Montague has forgotten that the leading utilitarian, Stanley Jevons, gave his case away and supported the labour theory of value when he said: —

It may tend to give the reader confidence in the preceding theories when he finds that they lead directly to the well-known law, as stated in the ordinary language of economists, that value is proportional to the cost of production.—(P. 186, Jevon’s “The Theory of Political Economy.” 4th edition. 1911.)

Mr. Montague is disturbed at the suggestion that qualitative differences in labour are nothing more than a question of the time and cost of producing skill. He instances an eminent bacteriologist and a man who irrigates a continent as examples of the absurdity of the idea. But why has he taken such people? Why not an eminent engine driver or builder’s labourer? Can Mr. Montague point to any professional bacteriologist or similar "eminent” man whose wages are not determined by the cost of educating him? But why worry about the ones that have gained eminence, anyway ? There are thousands of able men and women in all professions who have not gained eminence simply because they have either not been favoured or not been fortunate.

Surely there is no need to “prove” nowadays that scientists of all descriptions are turned out like sausages and that the discoveries of eminent men to-day are discredited to-morrow? And bacteriologists, in particular, have fared as badly as any. What Mr. Montague means by “and that their remuneration beyond the common undifferentiated denominator is taken out of the worker as a part of surplus value” we do not know. Marx has not suggested this nor has any writer in The Socialist Standard. Those who work for wages (or salaries) provide unpaid labour for the capitalist, otherwise they would not be employed. The scientist who does not have to work for his living lives on the unpaid labour of the workers, no matter how eminent he may be.

If we reject the labour theory of value do we give away the Socialist case? Mr. Montague asks this question, and answers, no. He then goes on to make some curious statements, among them a suggestion that, according to Marxists, exploitation only occurs in a factory. This is ridiculous. Whether the worker is employed in a factory, on the market or anywhere else by the capitalist for wages he is exploited. This was the contention of Marx (for example, his instance of the school teacher) and is the view of the Socialist. It is not affected by an analysis of wealth production.

As there is no explanation of what is meant by the assertion that “the member of the working class who has never done a stroke of work in his life and for whom capitalism has not been able to find a use is, nevertheless, robbed,” we are left in the dark. If this means that capitalism has robbed the man of actual wealth then it is nonsense. If it means that capitalism has robbed him of opportunity to engage in useful work then it is not a question of exploitation. Unless we have a common agreement about the meaning of the words we use we cannot make much progress in discussion. So far the meaning given to the term “exploitation” has been: using a person or a thing for one’s own ends. The capitalist class uses the working class for the purpose of producing profit. Hence, the working class is an exploited class and everyone born into the working class belongs to this exploited class. A man can belong to the working class and yet do no work.

Exploitation is both the cumulative robbery of workers in time measured by history and also by the clock. The palaces, ships and masses of capital goods are the historical results of exploitation. The daily output beyond what the worker gets are the daily results of exploitation. Marx has written chapters that explain both points.

The labour theory of value is essential to the accomplishment of Socialism for the following reason:—

The workers, as a class, produce the wealth and receive out of it only their cost of subsistence. The capitalists, as a class, take the rest, although they take no part in production. The labour theory of value explains how the robbery is effected. Until Marx put his theory forward in its perfected, or finished, form, the advocates of the workers were at the mercy of every currency reformer, tariff reformer, nationalist movement, and the like. Nowadays the Socialist knows how and why the workers are robbed, and on account of this he also knows that the only way to stop the robbery is to abolish capitalism and institute Socialism.

Exploitation only exists while there is an exploiting system. Explaining the mechanism of this system does not mean agreeing with it in whole or in part. Again we must say that we cannot see what connection there is between this and the remarks about equality of remuneration. Remuneration is only of importance where people have to live by remuneration, as they do under capitalism.

“From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” has always been the accepted principle of Socialists and is the antithesis of capitalism, but what this has to do with the Marxian analysis of value we cannot see. In ”The German Ideology” Marx stated quite clearly that capitalist conditions of labour will not apply under Socialism.

Under Socialism there will not be a division of labour and specialisation such as exists to-day, and the individual will no longer be enslaved to the world market.

Socialism is not “defended by proof of exploitation in factory time.” Ignoring for the moment the erroneous use of “factory time," we must point out that the labour theory of value is a criticism and an argument against capitalism. This theory shows that commodity production is built upon the exploitation of the worker and Socialism is put forward as the negation of this. Once Socialism is established, commodity production will be abolished. As the concept of value is only derived from commodities it will also disappear.

The fact that the workers are exploited to-day is the reason why they should abolish this system and establish another—Socialism—where there would be no exploitation.

Mr. Montague set out to show that the “Marxian doctrine of exchange is not a true theory of value,” and also “that it is not Socialist.” He has not accomplished either end. In the course of his argument he has made some irrelevant statements, but it would take more than the space available to deal adequately with them.

Gilmac.

The writer understands that Mr. Montague is making a further contribution. If so, will he explain more clearly what he means by the statement (in the fourth paragraph) “it is impossible to find an explanation of the factors of exchange between commodities in any theory dependant upon integrating prices.” Why is “between" italicised ?   

G.

Mr. F. Montague, M.P., Attacks the Labour Theory of Value (First Article) (1937)

From the September 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Blogger's Note: 

Fred Montague was the Labour MP for Islington West and, as a young man, was an active member of Hyndman's Social Democratic Federation. He was replying to Frank Evans' two-part article on the Labour Theory of Value which appeared in the July and August 1937 issues of the Socialist Standard.

Mr. F. Montague, M.P., Attacks the Labour Theory of Value (First Article)

I thank The Socialist Standard for allowing me to deal at reasonable length with Mr. Evans's articles on “The Labour Theory of Value.” The view that I desire to uphold is (1) that the Marxian doctrine of exchange is not a true theory of value, even an erroneous one, and (2) that it is not Socialist.

Mr. Evans asks what determines value when supply and demand are equal. I take up this point at once because the question throws into sharp relief, as I think, the fallacious reasoning common to the Marxist case.

Unless value and price are independent of each other, and there is in fact a “soul of the commodity” (Mr. Evans’s own phrase), such a question is like asking what determines the weather when the mercurial level in the barometer equals the atmospheric pressure outside. It is meaningless, not merely irrelevant.

But whether there is such an independent standard is the very issue in discussion. The objective and immediate fact in exchange is that prices fluctuate between what the buyer will pay rather than go without, and what the vendor will accept rather than make no sale, the operations of the market going on readily within those limits. No theoretical standard makes any difference to the facts. It is for the Marxist to show, over and beyond, that the alleged "soul of the commodity” is more than a metaphysical Pepper’s Ghost.

What Marx actually does is to average prices and call the result “value.” The independent standard turns out to be just the mean of price fluctuations, nothing more, except by way of dogmatic assertion. In other words, prices fluctuate “around” a standard set up by the fluctuations. An argument in a circle if ever there was one, and characteristic of the Marxian logical method throughout.

Commodities “embody” labour since they take labour to produce, and, obviously, labour takes time. There is no dispute so far. But the “embodiment” of labour does not, of itself, prove the labour-time theory. Marx relies upon the arithmetical process of addition-plus-division called “striking an average” and the platitude, which no one quarrels with, that exchange does not change things either in quantity or worth. In other words, he postulates labour time value for a start, performs the arithmetical exercise mentioned, and produces the inevitable result as proof of his postulate.

I could do exactly the same with molecular content, weight, or cubic volume. I could add up the eyes in a bushel of potatoes or the cheese-mites in a quantity of ripe “Stiltons," showing that nothing is added in the process of exchange, and, by division into the units in each case, that in average exchange averages are exchanged. There is no intended gibe in this. I contend that Marx does no more than what I have described and that averaging out an admitted content of the commodity no more proves the Marxian doctrine of exchange than it disproves any other.

When Marx tells me that if corn of the value of £2 10s. exchanges with wine of the value of £2 the com and wine together still total in value £4 10s. and that someone has merely been robbed, I agree. If the prices are as stated there is nothing else to be said. Not even the Marxian Aunt Sally, the “vulgar economist," ever claimed that profit was “created" outside the price ultimately fixed. Marx is right. Two-and-two, if it is two-and-two, make four. Two-pounds-ten- shillings and two-pounds make four-pounds-ten- shillings. Indubitably! Value has already set its seal upon even an inequitable transaction. But its inequity does not prove the Marxian Theory of Value.

The question of what is value still remains open. How is it that Marx begins, in this as in every other illustration of the kind, with money’s-worth ? Corn, wine, coats, chairs, all are priced for a start. Is it that the “money form of value" is invoked in order to give verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and illegitimate argument? Value is the thing actually under discussion. Its nature is being probed. Yet Marx calmly calls upon the competitor to hold the stop-watch, the prisoner to occupy the bench, tells us that pounds sterling are pounds sterling as if it were divine truth, and then proceeds to superimpose labour time upon his small change without a shred of logical excuse!

Once detecting this type of fallacy it is easy to understand why any other definition of value, any conception fantastic or otherwise, may be substituted for labour time without it making the slightest difference to the logical structure of any of the supposed cast-iron instances of the boot-and-butter-equation order. They begin with value (by sheer presumption labour time) in a chain of deduction that should only end in that desired, if elusive, quarry.

If this is disputed I challenge anyone to put pounds avoirdupois in the place of pounds sterling wherever the latter occurs by way of illustration, and see for himself whether a scrap of logical difference is made by the substitution. And if this is true where is the validity of the reasoning, whatever value might be in actual fact?

No assertion in the Marxian theory is held to be of greater importance in the alleged unique proof of exploitation than that profit is made, not in the market, but in the factory. It is imagined that the origin of value itself is involved in the dogma. How is it supported?

We are told that if a capitalist were to make profit on the market he would be compelled to surrender it when he in turn became, not a seller, but a buyer. Capitalists would have to do this upon the average all round anyhow if profit in general were made on the market. If someone sells dear, someone else buys dear; if anyone buys cheap, somebody sells cheap. Profit cannot be created in the mere exchange of commodities. No one ever said that it could, as a matter of fact, for that it has been said is a Marxian fiction.

But, this aside, what is meant by an adventitious profit “made on the market" being “surrendered" ? Surrendered to whom? Not to the consumer, for the “surrendering" is supposed to take place in the subsequent buying. To other capitalists then! Capitalists surrender profit to themselves! Surely an amazing outcome of a Marxian postulate that is inscribed on the very corner-stone of the theory. One might suggest that when the capitalist sells goods at large he takes it out of the public at large, whereas when capitalists “surrender" profit to each other they actually share the swag.

But I make no such statement. I regard the distinction between the factory and the market in the process of profit as entirely false. The act of making and realising profit is not two but one. There is no real distinction between paying wages and exchanging food and clothes for the same wages. If the process were to be completed without a market and the sustenance of the worker paid in kind direct the result would be the same. The worker is robbed of the difference between what he socially produces and what he consumes. That is the reality. Wages are only command of consumable goods. The market is only an extended factory.

Nothing is “made" in the factory but commodities. Nothing is realised in the market but the value of those same commodities. The operation begins in the factory to be completed in the market and Marx draws an entirely false distinction between two parts of the same process in order to bolster a time concept that would otherwise show itself as demonstrably false.

In my next and final article I shall seek to show that this time concept obscures the fundamental basis of Socialism and that its logical conclusion is, not Socialism, but a wage system. I conclude now by pointing out that “buying cheap and selling dear” is not alleged to be the origin of profit by anyone and is no part of any theory of value whatever. It is pure invention and pure fiddle-sticks. There is no meaning in the terms until value has been determined. The most capitalist of economists asserts that commodities exchange at actual values according to their conceptions of value. Marx juggles with “dear” and "cheap” without authority or relevance, and in advance of the very judgment that alone can settle what is dear and what is cheap. He begs the question.

(A second article will follow.)

Reply.

As the writer of the article criticised is away at present, the criticism has been passed on to me.

There have been, and still are (for we get the question at our lectures), people who argue that price, and therefore value, is determined by the operations of supply and demand. In order to show that this cannot be so, we point out that at times demand and supply are equal, and therefore neutralise each other. At one time supply is greater than demand, at another time it is less. There must be a time when, like the see-saw, the two sides are level. In order to dispose of this argument, therefore, we put a question that is quite relevant, in spite of Mr. Montague’s barometrical illustration.

The ends of a see-saw rise a certain height and fall a certain depth, but they do so about a certain point. Why? Because the fulcrum keeps the seesaw moving about that point. Whether the whole contraption overturns or is wrecked does not alter the matter. Mr. Montague may de-materialise the fulcrum but it will still be there.

Prices rise and fall about a certain level—the point is higher in a pound of butter than in a pound of potatoes. What is it determines this level? Is it the higgling of the market that determines a higher point in one than in the other, or is it something else? There must be something, and it cannot be the relations between supply and demand as, in general, they only have effect within a limited range—supply and demand of butter, supply and demand of potatoes. It should be obvious that relative usefulness is also ruled out.

Marx does not average prices and call the result value. He shows that the fluctuations are around a given point and that it is the value of the article which, in the ultimate, determines the position of this point. Prices, therefore, do not “ fluctuate ‘around' a standard set up by fluctuations,” a curious reading of Marx, if ever there was one!

The level of the sea rises and falls, but there is still a mean level which is not the result of averaging the fluctuations but of the quantity of water in the sea, though averaging the fluctuations will give the same point. That disposes of Mr. Montague’s barometer.

Marx does not rely upon an arithmetical process of addition plus division, etc., to prove the labour-time theory of value, nor does he “postulate labour-time value for a start.” He examines the exchange relation at length and finds that the proportions in which articles exchange for each other is not accidental but is an expression of something that they all possess in common. He uses a geometrical illustration to make the point clear; the calculation of the areas of rectilinear figures by decomposing them into triangles.

He then sets out to find, by the process of exclusion, what it is that all commodities have in common. In the end he shows that the only measurable thing they all possess in common is human labour. This is the end of a process of analysis, which occupies the first five pages of "Capital,” and not the beginning, as Mr. Montague asserts.

Marx’s case is not, as Mr. Montague suggests, that someone is robbed because corn of the value of £2 10s. 0d. has been exchanged for wine of the value of £2. Such an entire misrepresentation makes us wonder. It seems incredible that anyone could have read Marx’s own version of his theory of value and hold such a view of it. Anyhow, we defy Mr. Montague to produce such a statement of the value theory from Marx’s writings.

Marx, in opposition to capitalist economists, . states most emphatically that equal values are exchanged—i.e., £2 of corn for £2 of wine—and yet someone is robbed. This disposes of Mr. Montague’s ironical remarks, which are quite irrelevant.

Marx does not begin all his Illustrations with money’s worth. In fact he does not mention money’s worth until he has reached page 41 of ‘‘Capital.” His previous illustrations are of the 20 yards of linen equals 1 coat variety. Having analysed the simplest forms of exchange and shown quite clearly that labour is the substance of value, Marx proceeds to examine the price form in the light of what has gone before. When he comes to this point he is dealing with the world of commodities around him, where "corn, wine, coats, chairs, all are priced for a start,” whatever Mr. Montague may think about it. As Marx does not say anything about pounds sterling being pounds sterling, or even arguing to that effect, we simply don’t understand Mr. Montague's attempt at humour in this connection.

According to Mr. Montague, it is a Marxian fiction that anyone-has said that profit is made in the mere exchange of commodities. This is another amazing statement. The view in question has been, and still is, held by numerous people. It was at the basis of one of the leading schools of political economy — the Mercantilists. Put in another form, it meant buying cheap and selling dear.

When the capitalist sells goods at large he does not take it out of the public at large. What he does is to get back in money form what he has taken out of his workers, and he can do this whether he sells to workers or capitalists.

As Mr. Montague does not accept the labour theory of value he naturally can see no reason to distinguish between the factory, where goods are produced, and the market, where their values are realised. Yet he agrees that the worker is robbed of the difference between what he socially produces and what he consumes. How is he robbed ? Mr. Montague does not say, and yet this is the very heart of the matter. It is failure to understand this that has put the worker at the mercy of every kind of tax reformer and money crank who professed to be able to give the worker a greater command over consumable goods.

No, Mr. Montague has made fun of Marx, but so far he has not shown any flaw in the view that the worker is robbed of the difference between the value of what he produces and what he gets. What he gets depends upon how much the employer pays him for the work he does and not upon how much his products realise in the market.

Gilmac.

Anti-Fa Farce France (2026)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

The Anti-Fa Farce France: what was it all about?

It’s a little too early to make any definitive appreciations of the recent demonstrations and riots which have have spread across metropolitan France during the last five or weeks. during the last five or so weeks. Doubtless, readers of the Socialist Standard blog will have seen the images of massive gangs of young people looting and setting fire to shops and attacking police dressed in riot gear. As is only to be expected, it’s the most violent scenes which have found their way onto the mainstream news; the fire which destroyed the Town Hall of Limoges being a case in point. On the other hand, the media also showed images of the enormous and well-ordered demonstrations by students who were more often than not accompanied by teachers and parents. There were demonstrations in small towns right across France which recalled in many ways the monster manifestations in defence of retirement pension of a few years ago.

Mysterious wreckers

Demonstrations are, of course, part and parcel of everyday life in France there being something of a deeply rooted culture of defiance common to the left and right. What was notable in this case was the massive presence of hooded and masked casseurs – vandals – uniformly dressed in black who were clearly operating in organised and one suspects disciplined mobs. These agents provocateurs incited the more disorganised groups of casual looters who are now found in all mass disorders breaking out across the globe.

Strangely enough these violent groups, sometimes known as the black bloc are rarely picked up by the police and arrested. Nobody knows who they are. They are used to maintain ordinary citizens at a cautious distance from their rights to free expression. Amazingly those conventional politicians who managed to find their way across the Parisian battlefield into the safe havens of the TV studios seem to be convinced that their membership consists of highly organised members of the ‘ultra-gauche’. (Earlier references to the black bloc seem to have been edited out of the official narrative).The designated culprit it would seem are what they call the ‘anti-fa’ (anti-fascist); heretofore a fantastical organisation which has miraculously put down solid roots in the USA. Here There they have – according to the official narrative – violently interrupted the work of Trump’s anti-immigrant agency and rendered the (strictly anti-constitutional) operations of the ICE goons problematic. One may ask, aren’t we supposed to be anti-fascist in a democracy?

What’s Going On? Political ineptitude

For the point, of course, is that we are talking about a movement initiated and organised by kids ; high-school students to be precise. Consequently the maintaining of public order and the protection of protestors should run together. However, parents would do well to realize that the government at times seems to be applying the selfsame tactics cynically deployed against the gilets jaunes of a few years ago. This was a movement which was quite violently repressed in every sense of the term.

In the case of the students, however, a certain circumspection was in evidence in the days preceding the events of last Saturday even though some youngsters were roughed up, injured and arrested. It’s quite possible that something changed in the clumsy official response on Saturday 17 October. TV coverage insisted heavily upon the destruction of shops and public buildings, to the exclusion of the peaceful marches undertaken by school students and sympathisers. Up to a point, the authorities seem to have attempted to calm down the situation, although if anything Macron’s typically leaden televised address to the nation on Sunday made clear his crass insensitivity to the demands of the students – mentioned in passing – and to his incredible political ineptitude.

For the point is that once the tear-gas has wafted away, it will become evident that the students had drawn up an extremely intelligent and reasonable list of demands, demands which would give some substance to the egalitarianism established by the republican constitution and proclaimed above the façade of every single school lycée in France.

Neglected issues

To give effect to these aspirations, the students were asking for the urgent building of schools and for the renovation of ill-adapted and run-down premises. The recent and stifling heat waves which hit France over the summer saw school pupils attempting to tackle the baccalaureate exams in building lacking window blinds and adequate ventilation, as teachers and administrators ran around with water bottles to quench the thirst of distressed youngsters. In the winter many classrooms are freezing, ceilings are leaky and sanitary facilities are filthy. Many schools lack facilities to deal with students experiencing psychological problems often resulting from learning disabilities.

Other demands include a demand for a massive recruitment drive to deal with the shortage of trained teachers. The typically French drama of classes without teachers at the beginning of the school term is high on the list of preoccupations. But teacher recruitment is difficult given stagnant wages and disaffection. Note that the hapless Minister of Education hurriedly pulled hundreds of trained teachers out of a standby status when the demonstrations started to tilt public opinion onto the side of the youngsters.

Other demands made by the students were nothing if not legitimate. Better student grants, subsidies to help with student accommodation, more places to be made available in the (increasingly run-down) universities, more student representation in schools and at long last, measures to reform the ludicrous and exhaustingly over-loaded school curriculum. More time to eat in the midday pause and so on and on. In short, these are measures which aim at the re-establishment of an equilibrium centred on student well-being; welfare measures and so on. In short, the kind of bread and butter issues neglected during the long and uncaring duration of Macron’s atrocious term in office.

Malcolm Mansfield, 

Paris